Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?
by rinavak
Summary: Anna was killed by Elsa's ice spell when she was five (rather than being 'cured' by the trolls), and was reanimated as a corpse. The fic follows the song 'Do You Wanna Build a Snowman' from both Elsa and Anna's perspectives. Based on a tumblr post that can be found here:


Elsa clenched the crumpled material of her skirts in both fists and tears leaked from her tightly shut eyes as the scratchy voice of her sister seeped through the crack under the door. "Elsa?" Five knocks. A breathy sob escaped Elsa's lips. "Do you wanna build a snowman?" A memory played behind Elsa's eyelids, of her sister's hair and eyes paling to shades lighter even than her own, of her slow reanimation from the death that her mother had cried over, and of the last haunting look she had thrown over her shoulder at her sister before locking herself in her room. The words 'my fault' had been on repeat in Elsa's mind ever since.

"Come on, let's go and play." Elsa said nothing, and sunk to the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees. "I never see you anymore – come out the door." A sigh. "It's like you've gone away." _It's you who's gone away, Anna. _"We – we used to be best buddies." Anna's voice took on a whining quality, highlighting the broken and jagged way it now sounded. "And now we're not. I wish you would tell me why." Elsa sucked in a harsh breath through her teeth as ice spread around her, crawling up the door and across the walls. _It's my fault. I did this to you, Anna._ "Do you wanna build a snowman? " Changing her tone to a whisper and moving her mouth to the keyhole she went on – "It doesn't have to be a snowman."

Elsa's head reared up and, with salty tears falling into her mouth she replied, with as much venom as she could muster, "Go away, Anna!"

The dead girl on the other side of the door hung her head, letting her small, cold hand drop from the door. "Okay, bye." She wondered, for the first time of many, what was wrong with her, as if she didn't see the ice that formed in the crevices of her finger nails or hear her unnatural (though small) voice.

Elsa flinched as the now slightly deeper voice of her sister reached her ears, and she paused where she stood in the middle of her room, comb in her hand. "Do you wanna build a snowman? Or ride our bikes around the halls?" Though Elsa was no longer traumatised by the daily onslaught of her sister's enthusiasm, marred greatly by the shadow of death that hung over her, it still brought on fresh waves of guilt and self-hatred, and she raised one hand to her hair to pull at it nervously, while the other she placed firmly on a wall to keep steady. "I just – I think some company is overdue. I've started talking to the pictures on the walls." A laugh that sounded like shattering windows followed. "It…it gets a little lonely." Anna had become partially aware of why her parents wouldn't look at her eyes, and she had covered the mirror in her room with one of the curtains that hung on the window, disgusted by her ashy complexion and dead eyes, afraid to look at the faint and slightly paler scar that splattered across her cheek as if a thin layer of frost covered that area. She pulled at her braids, a lump forming in her throat as she took in the starch whiteness of them, and the thought that plagued her sprung up – that it was no wonder she was alone when she looked the way she did, when she could make people shiver with just the sound of her voice…when not even her sister could bare to see her. It was no wonder she was despised. "All these empty rooms…just watching the hours tick by." _Why am I like this?_

Elsa, with her eyes wide open and haunted thought, as she did every day, _It's my fault_, as if in reply. _Ride our bikes_, she gave a broken laugh as she heard her sister slump away, dejected. She'd heard Anna try to ride a bike and from all the crashing, she guessed that her dead limbs were too slow.

Having heard of her parents' death, Elsa had sat silently in her room, staring into space for she didn't know how long, and she woke from what seemed like trances multiple times. No tears came, no matter how long she waited. It seemed she had subconsciously decided that she had cried enough in one lifetime. A childish part of her suggested that she had run out of tears.

She let out a shaky breath as she heard her sister approach the door. She didn't bother to knock. "Elsa? _Please_. I know you're in there." Her cracked voice had never sounded so desperate for Elsa's attention, and she had been desperate since she was five years old. Anna, looking down at her hands, caked in the tan paste she often covered herself in in an effort to appear normal, sealed her lips to stop a sob rising. "People are asking where you've been." The last time Elsa had left her room had been a week and a half ago, when she'd first heard news of her parents' death. Though before that she had barely ventured out anyway, only enough so that she still knew her sister's face, her presence was now expected by her people. Echoing her younger self, she walked to the door and slid down with her back to it, pulling her knees up to her chin and turning her head so that her ear rested against the door. For the first time in her memory, she didn't try to block out her sister's unintentionally sharp-toned words. "They're…they say have courage and I'm trying to. I'm standing here for _you_. Just – Elsa, just let me in." Anna's breath hitched, and she placed a hand on the doorknob, her lifeless skin un-phased by the ice coating it. "I know that you never – wanted me…here, but – but we only have each other, okay? It's just you and me." Falling to her knees and resting her forehead against the door, Anna muttered, in a far quieter tone, "What are we gonna do?" Anna mentally corrected her 'we' to 'I', though she didn't really mean to. It was a habit that stemmed from the fact that she had never known what it was not to be alone, and had thus accepted that she would go through life in a loveless stupor, having not heard a word directed at her from her sister for a decade – the last being 'go away, Anna'. Turning and falling back against the door with her legs splayed in front of her, her clumsy movements bringing about more tears as she was reminded of why she was living that way – of what she was, Anna ended her plea with the tired phrase, "Do you wanna build a snowman?", her voice shaking uncontrollably.

Elsa's eternal silence had always been and was more painful than her old hurtful words, and Anna bowed her head, her aching sobs going without tears, parallel to Elsa's silence as lines of water made tracks on her pale cheeks.

It was the last time Anna stood outside Elsa's door.


End file.
